Minnesotan and Indian American Ishanaa Rambachan has won the Rhodes scholarship for the year 2008. The Rhodes Scholarship selects 80 students worldwide (32 from the states ) and provides them an opportunity to pursue degree courses at Oxford University . Past winners include former US president Bill Clinton and former democratic presidential contender and NBA star Bill Bradley. Congratulations Ishanaa! Congratulations too all the Rhodes scholarship winners. Other winners of Indian American origin include, Deep J. Shah from Duluth, Georgia Pravin S. Rajan Albuquerque, New Mexico among others.

A judge who passes comments before hearing both sides of the argument does not deserve to pass judgments.

When I was a kid I grew up wondering if there was even a system of justice in India other than fists, sticks, stones and lethal weapons. To my relief, I am discovering there is in fact a justice system but alas the relief is only short lived. The supreme court is the apex body and it is piled with many men who have little clue on the aspirations of the majority of the people and remain alienated from the masses. Yes, these are alienated men who pass judgments based on alien laws that were borrowed from an alien society. I wonder how many times the Constitution of India has been amended?

Here is a nice editorial from The Hindu, pulling up the unconstitutional behavior of a man who supposedly keeps the law. In polite and mild terms this is pathetic and shows how the apex court in India is infested with biased men.

The Ramar Setu is described in MSN Encarta as a group of islands connecting the Indian subcontinent and the Island of Sri Lanka.

The Ramar Setu has recently become a subject of argument and debate. Ships transporting cargo between the East Coast and the West Coast have to go around the island of Sri Lanka in the present day scenario. The Goverment of India apparently wanted to create a shorter route for these ships and make way by clearing this island cluster and deepening the straits.

The primary reason this is of interest to me is that this is a beautiful structure at least from the satellite imagery on google maps, only the Gods, so to speak have the imagination to build some thing of this scale and beauty.

Here are some reasons why this is interesting to me,

- Shipping as a mode of transportation is under-developed/under-utilized in India, Railways is the big kahuna for cargo transportation in this continent. This is only empirical, you can post some numbers in the comments section if you want to. This project will be a boost for shipping.

- The Indian sub continent has a vast coast line. Universities specialising in Marine Biology and Marine biologists are as rare as Indian olympic athletes in a country of over a billion people. Do you have a friend who went to university and studied marine biology? Probably not.

Marine biology and the beautiful tropical waters of this area may get some attention, at least one hopes that they will.

- The Archaeological Society of India (poor suckers -I pity them – I wonder what they think/say to each other every day they walk into work.). They may have to do some real work and “dig” up some convincing evidence.

- The party in power (DMK) that desperately wants to build this canal and dredge the straits, was born out of a social revolution movement and was based on the ethos of an “individual’s self respect”, “power of reasoning”. In essence , these were advocates of the “power of reasoning” over superstitions and blind faith. If your question to them is, Was ramar sethu built by Rama a mythological character in the Indian epic Ramayana and God to many present day faithful devotees? You pretty much have your answer.

Above all this is a classic Faith vs Science debate. Strangely and in a funny way, these kinds of debates rarely happen in India. This is a one of a kind.

If you were googling for Ramar Sethu and ended up seeing this video you have probably noticed the many flaws in the arguments and argument construction.

Ironically, this guy calls himself a scientist and proposes to protect the ramar setu as a monument of ancient heritage, funny.

As for me, I am content answering more trivial questions like who built the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge.

Vanakkam! until next time…

There is a great amount of media coverage about this bridge collapse but the pictures in this post present another view of the disaster.

Here are some pictures taken by some of my friends who live in the cedar avenue/riverside neighborhood.

I was on my way home driving the opposite way (west), from work when I heard about this disaster on the radio.

This disaster like any other sad event raises many questions, the question on my mind though is how newer technologies can be used to warn and prevent one off disasters and rare incidents like these, where invaluable human lives are lost?